The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray’s Anatomy

The classic medical text known as Gray’s Anatomy is one of the most famous books ever created. In this masterly work of creative nonfiction, Bill Hayes uncovers the extraordinary lives of the seminal volume’s author and illustrator while providing a “scalpel’s-eye” view into the ingenuity of the human body.

Reviews:

“All laud and honor to Hayes. In perusing the body’s 650 muscles and 206 bones, he has made the case that we are . . . ‘fearfully and wonderfully made.’”— The Washington Post

“Prose both lucid and arrestingly beautiful.”–Publishers Weekly

“Hayes’s history of the illustrated medical text Gray’s Anatomy coincides with the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of its first publication. Fascinated by the fact that little was known about the famous book’s genesis, Hayes combed through nineteenth-century letters and medical-school records, learning that, besides Henry Gray, the brilliant scholar and surgeon who wrote the text, another anatomist was crucial to the book’s popularity: Henry Vandyke Carter, who provided its painstaking drawings. Hayes moves nimbly between the dour streets of Victorian London, where Gray and Carter trained at St. George’s Hospital, and the sunnier classrooms of a West Coast university filled with athletic physical therapists in training, where he enrolls in anatomy classes and discovers that ‘when done well, dissection is very pleasing aesthetically.’”— The New Yorker, 2-4-2008

4 comments on “The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray’s Anatomy”

I have recently finished reading Insomniac City and wanted to share that I was blown away by it. So thank you that your writing and photographs managed to have a profound impact. As one gets older one begins (or at least I did) to feel jaded that nothing will speak to your heart or soul. Perhaps now I have to continue finding those writers and artists that do and I want you to know that you are one of those. I look forward to reading The Anatomist.

I have this morning finished Insomniac city! Wow….tears, laughter and profound …feeling. I am a long time fan of Dr Sacks’ writing and even had the awesome experience of listening to him speak and meet him when he was in Australia many years ago. I loved your insight to how his world opened up when you two met, and I am now going to read his memoir. I can’t wait to visit NYC next year. Thanks again for a beautiful, poignant book.